Do You Want Your Team To Be Fit?

New Season, Same Plan

“You have no choices about how you lose, but you do have a choice about how you come back and prepare to win again..” Pat Riley, basketball executive, and former NBA head coach.

If your team is to be competitive during a season, you need to have a plan that starts at your first practice, through to your final game. Your physical plan should, not only improve your players’ fitness but should also support your style of play.

Your physical preparation should use the game as the starting point, its demands, and what your players need to compete.

Getting Fit

Following the summer holidays, high school soccer pre-season was 12 – 14 days before the first game. This afforded 6 days of consecutive training. My objective was – Get Them Fit. That meant running and sprinting on back to back days.

Surely, this was the best method to improve their fitness in a short period of time.

I had the player doing the dreaded Indian Run and the beep test. Players were feeling the effects of physical conditioning from day one. The end of training involved some form of sprinting over 20 to 30 yards.

Doing The Same = Same Outcome

How can the physical training in the first week of the season be the same 5 weeks later.?

Week 1 – Coach instructs, “Boys 4 laps to start, off you go.”
Week 5 – Coach reminds, “C’mon boys, you know the routine, 4 laps”

If week 1 and week 5 physical preparation be the same?

Clearly, after that period your players must have improved physically, given they were training at least twice per week, plus playing a weekly game.

Your training needs to progress based on where you are in your season.

Physical Preparation

For players 13 years old and up, the planning and scheduling of training become more important in order to prevent soft tissue injuries and fatigue. It is important that you periodize your training starting from the ‘big picture’ and break it down.

Then you can apply specific methods and forms of training, in a gradual manual so players can adapt accordingly. Each form of training has its benefits and limitations.

These principles guide your planning to progressively improve the physical fitness of your team. It gives you a roadmap to follow so that your players not only get fit, but they stay fit. This helps you to decide when to ‘load’ and when to taper.

Preparation for Spring Season 2021

Assumptions
Players’ Age – 14+
Practice – 2x per week
Game – 1x per week (first game 16 days from first practice)
Duration – March 24 – June 20

STEP 1 – Plan Your Cycles

Start with your first practice date and your final game to determine your cycles.

Macro: 3.8 months (long term plan)

Meso: 3 – 4 week blocks (mid-range periods based on season objectives)

Micro: 7 days (training from one game to next)

STEP 2 – Meso Planning

Plan your physical training in blocks. In this manner, you can train specific objectives throughout the season. For example, pre-season preparation (1 – 3 weeks).

To achieve this objective, training would be based on the endurance principles of zone 1 (basic endurance) and zone 2 (aerobic capacity).

Step 3 – Micro Planning

This is typically the cycle of training sessions that are planned from 1 game to the next. A common time period is one week.

1. Establish clear objectives for each training session.
   NB – You cannot train everything and should not.
   
2. Decide on your form of Training
   – Running (without a ball)
   – Technical exercises (with a ball)
   – Practice Games (in competition)
   
3. Fix the workload
   – Earmark the training zones (1 – 3)
   – Know the intensity (% maximum heart rate)
   
4. Organize your training
   – Number of players
   – Duration of session
   – Duration of aerobic work
   – Sets
   – Repetitions
   – Work to Rest ratio
   

Quality vs. Quantity

Getting your players physically fit for the season demands planning, starting from the ‘big picture’ and breaking it down into weekly training sessions. Training needs to be based on where your team is during the season and it should progress in terms of intensity as players improve.

To improve physical fitness you need to have specific objectives for each session, and those need to be achieved through specific forms of training.

Download

You can access a FREE download of a Zone 1 Training Session.

References

FIFA – Physical Preparation & Physical Development & Training Manual

Wagenschutz, James. Periodization 101: Planning Your Training Sessions For Optimal Physical Performance. USC Convention, Baltimore 2020

US Soccer Federation. Session Planning Components. 2014